Picture Yourself on a chair, feeling drowsy. The fire crackles slowly as Your head fills with cloud. And Your eyes start to buckle, start to falter and darken. And You’re floating off softly into Space, into Time, into past-felt adventurers of a child. Of a You.

Of a You that was once and was once not long ago now. When Your eyes were much clearer and You saw what was there. And You stood in the garden, saw the things past the hedges. And You stood on the doorstep, saw the thing in the hall.

But they told You that You shouldn’t and You mustn’t so You didn’t and You wouldn’t until You couldn’t and You can’t anymore. And that’s when they lost You. Down the gaps and through the doorways. Out the windows that are open and the wind blows in cold.

Out the window, out the window. Is there something out the window? Always something out the window but it means nothing now. There’s a You by a doll’s house looking in through the window. Looking in at the doll’s room and the doll’s lying there.

And a You feeling drowsy is feeling drowsy no longer because a You feeling drowsy is awakened, with a small sigh. And You’re looking at the window, at the window that is open. When You look up at the window there’s an eye looking in.

There’s a river round the doll’s house and a garden and a mountain but the garden’s full of stones now and the mountain’s hollowed out. And the stones sometimes are moving, sometimes weeping, sometimes moving. And the stones have hollow voices and the mountain leads the song.

There’s a wind-vane on the rooftop, always creaking as the wind blows. With its wings stretched and its claws out and it sits there, watching still. And a man lies in a bedroom, in a cellar, by the cold stones. And they lie there and were lied to and in lying, Truth’s found.

What it is now, what it was then, there’s no difference. Nothing changes. When You’re stood there in the doll’s house, as the wind blows round about. And the old man on the doorstep isn’t leaving ’til you’ve paid him. And You pay him, like they all do, with the first-minted coin.

Hear an organ playing music, playing softly. Never-changing. But You’re changing. Growing dimmer, getting lost in the fog. In the fog made out of cobwebs, music boxes and of old news. Out of whispers, out of soldiers, out of children, out of stares.

So the dust motes start to gather but You can’t even see them with Your dew-slick eyes blinkered by old, wrinkled skin. And the breaths come but sharply. Longer pauses, little wonder. Little hands clutching here-there with their nails black and long.

Until it doesn’t any longer and you couldn’t if You wanted but now it feels like You don’t want it so it doesn’t and it’s fine. For a moment, just a moment, there is sunlight for the first time in a long time and You’re flying through the window and